


Max Appeal

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Hawk tries to help Klinger win Winchester with a Halloween costume.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Kudos: 4





	Max Appeal

November 1, 1952

The Korean police action had been quiet, allowing the madcap personnel of MASH 4077th to cut loose for their annual Halloween bash. They had played the Withered Corpse game (irreverently with mess tent food but the very real threat of very real organs). They had danced the Monster Mash - changing the lyrics to fit their surreal circumstances. They had even had a contest for most realistic wounds - created in makeup rather than created by mortar fire. 

But the most interesting event of the night had been the failed seduction of Charles Emerson Winchester III. 

Hawkeye had played the (lecherous) mentor to Maxwell Klinger. Now that his advice had failed, Max was before him with huge, hurt eyes and the wish for an explanation. 

Pierce was  _ very  _ hungover. But he liked the Corporal. Hell, he even liked Charles (sometimes). So he did his best to sit up and walk the kid through the night. “You wore the costume?”

“Uh huh.” It had hardly been his strangest. 

“ _ Just _ the costume?” 

“Yeah, sir. Unless you count pearls.” 

“You always look good in pearls.” 

“Not to the Major, apparently. He just laughed.”

“Lemme look into it, Klinger. But I’ll say this - if you had been in  _ my  _ cot in a banana costume, I would have got peeling.” 

***

A shower, four aspirin, three coffees, and several hours later, Pierce went to find his tentmate (and sometime mild nemesis) to try to discover why he’d turned his patrician nose up at the one person in camp who really wanted to be around him. (To say nothing of over, beneath, and inside…) 

The Major was not hungover (he’d learned his lesson a bit after a night in Tokyo had almost resulted in an unwanted wedding), and he smirked to see Pierce taking small steps, babying his head. 

“It was a happy Halloween, I take it?” he said by way of a greeting.

“For some of us. Heard you passed on your treat, though.” 

“Hmmm?”

Pierce sighed; apparently it wasn’t just Klinger who required being led back through the night. 

“Last night, when you got back here, there was a little something,” (Klinger  _ was  _ little compared to the surgeon), “waiting for you.” 

Charles visibly searched his memory; the event clearly hadn’t made much of an impression. Pierce wished, for not the first time, he could X-ray that  _ mind  _ and see how it worked. How lofty did one’s thoughts need to be to overlook a very bright, very phallic costume with a very willing partner inside? 

“I find that I recall nothing. P’raps I have become inured to your pranks at last and slept quite through this one.”

“This wasn’t a  _ trick _ , Charles. Weren’t you listening?”

Something about the exasperation or the impatience of his tone registered with the physician. “Pierce, I really do not know what you are on about. Might I suggest you tell me and avoid further increasing what looks to be an already considerable headache?” 

_ You’re the considerable headache,  _ Pierce thought, unkindly and a little nonsensically. “Klinger, Charles. Did you see him last night?”

The other surgeon chuckled. “Indeed. One of his more a-“peel”-ling looks, I do not doubt.” The Corporal hadn’t been the only banana in camp either; Charles remembered seeing another corpsman so costumed and thinking they were only a few shy of a bunch! 

Pierce narrowly avoided smacking himself in the face. “You couldn’t have told  _ him  _ that? The poor kid looks like Charlie Brown after he got all those rocks!” 

Charles was lost again. “Beg pardon?”

“Charles, there is exactly one person in this camp - in this country, on  _ this continent  _ that Maxwell Klinger would like to  _ appeal _ to — and you’re it.” 

The Major’s eyes went wide, but no trust dwelled in them. “Pierce?” 

Hawkeye saw him “click through” a series of images in his head. One of them, he thought, had better be of a kid in a banana suit. 

“You… you, ah, advised the Corporal, I take it?” It did make a sick sort of sense. Max looked up to their surgical team, and, when it came to bedroom matters, Pierce was the camp expert. 

“For all the good it did. How could you be so oblivious? The way he sticks to you? That vocabulary course he took - you really never put it together?” 

_ You couldn’t have told me all this  _ **_before_ ** ?! “Pierce, what on Earth made either of you imagine that it was to a big banana that I should respond!? You could not have encouraged him to don his French maid’s outfit?  _ That  _ I would have understood.”

Hawkeye sat up too fast and his hangover slapped him with a gauntlet; his stomach was making rapid fire threats. “Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. You like him in skirts?” Realizing what he’d said, he rocked back and forth in excitement- the motion ill-advised but irrepressible. “You like him  _ at all _ !?” His best hope for Klinger, when he’d come to him for advice, was that the kid might get a fun lay out of Winchester - and Hawk had told him as much. 

Klinger hadn’t protested. Sure, he  _ wanted _ more than a Halloween night lick of that particular lollipop - but if that was all he could get, well, Hawk thought he might treasure it for all time anyway. 

“Charles!? I need information here, old buddy, old chum.” 

“P’raps, someday, I shall sink so low as to give it to you, Pierce, but it seems I have other matters to attend to at the moment.” 

“More pressing Klinger down into the mattress matters?” 

Charles paused at the door and said, far too casually. “If that is what he wishes. With those skirts of his, however, don’t you think he would look simply smashing on top?” 

Then he was gone and Hawk really hoped BJ turned up fast. Getting his jaw off of the floor was going to be a two man job - and, boy, did he have some fun gossip to confide! 

_ On top, huh? I’m happy for you, Klinger. I just hope he peels you out of whatever you’re in with all the sweetness you deserve!  _

***

Half-reading and half-dozing, Max was startled into full wakefulness by Charles’ arrival. 

“Hiya, Major. Need to place a call or somethin’?”

“No. I would like to speak with you. It seems that I, ah, misunderstood your presence last night. I apologize.”

Now Max looked scared. “Captain Pierce yelled at you, huh? Look, sir,”

Charles made a gentle, stand-down motion. “Darling, Pierce dressed you up as that which  _ he _ most desires - low-hanging fruit. You mustn’t allow yourself to be undervalued in that way.” 

The Major was often difficult to follow. Max gave him a skeptical look as he tried. “You think I shoulda been something else?” 

“Maxwell, I think you should have come to my bed as any of your kind and beautiful selves and told me to kneel at your feet and beg for the privilege of your touch.” 

“You thought it was what? Me being there? A Halloween prank?”

“I did, yes.”

Klinger’s mouth quivered with amusement. “Major! Didn’t you see I was kinda naked in that banana?” 

“Darling, if I had, I assure you that I would have availed myself of the very nearest sharp instrument to cut you loose.”

“It had a zipper.”

“But would a scalpel not have been more flattering?” 

Klinger thought about it and nodded. “Sure woulda been. Guess I gotta wait ‘til next Halloween now.” 

Winchester flashed him a truly baleful look. 

“What? Halloween’s over, Major. I can’t go around in crazy clothes just so you can have some fun with me.” 

That the section eight seeker could comprehend these lines - never mind deliver them with a straight face - was beyond impressive (and pretty hilarious). 

“I did apologize, Maxwell.” 

Won over by the soft look in his eye, the Corporal left off teasing. “What do you want to see me in, then, Major, since we missed the witching hour an’ all?”

“My arms. My life.” 

Klinger trembled. “Sir? You’re not just talking about sex, huh?” 

“No, darling.” His smile was gentle, amused. It seemed he was not the only one capable of misreading a scene. “Unless that is your wish?” 

“Not… not if it doesn’t hafta be. I didn’t think you’d want me for much else, honestly, sir.” 

Charles swept towards him and kissed him hard enough and long enough to banish such nonsense from his thoughts. Then he made good on every candy-sweet fantasy Maxwell had ever had before snuggling against him, warming him against the deepening winter night. 

“Sorry everything got all mixed up between us, Major,” Klinger said sleepily. 

“Darling, that is what comes of listening to a man who owns a gorilla suit.” But he kissed his nose. “If you had asked, my pretty one, I would have told you that you have always appealed to me - in or out of costume.” 

Smiling as he drifted, Max found himself very much looking forward - uncharacteristically- to all the times he would find himself  _ out _ of costume, but safe in Charles’ embrace. 

End! 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
